Swifties, this one’s for you. It seems like Taylor Swift's Eras Tour has lasted eons. Yet somehow, there’s always something to talk about. Just thinking about how much she’s accomplished while on tour makes me want to buckle down, lock in, and channel my inner girlboss. But while I can’t even be bothered to cook dinner at home after a long day of work, Taylor is accomplishing milestones most musicians can only dream of. Let’s recap.
The Era’s Tour began in March 2023 with its North American leg. It’s set to go until December 2024, with dates in Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America— spanning 152 shows across five continents.
As the queen of multitasking, Swift hasn’t stopped at just selling out stadiums. Since the Eras tour began, she’s released multiple albums — both new and old — and shaken up the tour setlist with each new release. Her list of new releases started on the first day of tour with “All Of The Girls You Loved Before,” which was quickly followed up by “The Alcott,” a feature on The National’s album — reciprocity for their work on her pandemic era albums, Folklore and Evermore.
She also released Midnights: Late Night Edition (including the iconic collab with Ice Spice), as well as not one but two album re-releases — Speak Now Taylor's Version and 1989 Taylor's Version. As if that wasn’t enough, she announced her latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, in a GRAMMY’s acceptance speech. Talk about legendary. Since its release, she’s also been churning out deluxe versions and remixes to keep us on our toes. The Eras Tour was even made into a Blockbuster film that brought Beyonce to its premiere. Star power: confirmed.
But that’s just her work life. Her personal life is just as eventful. She ended her 7-year relationship with Joe Alwyn in April 2023. Then entered into a brief but controversial fling with 1975 frontman Matty Healy. Though it didn’t last long, the relationship was enough to inspire a whole album and catapult her into her current romance with Travis Kelce, aka Amerca’s first nepo boyfriend. Now they’re the American Royal couple — and she somehow had time to fly from tour to his Super Bowl performance.
We all have the same hours in the day as Taylor Swift, but how she uses them will always be a mystery to me. I work eight hours a day and can barely manage a social life. Meanwhile, Taylor literally has it all — though conservatives are turning on her for daring to be a woman in her 30s who’s not married with kids. If that’s not proof that women can’t do anything right, I don’t know what is.
Clearly, she’s working late because she’s a singer. No wonder Taylor Swift became a billionaire months into her tour in October 2023. Her net worth is currently around 1.3 billion dollars, making her the only female musician to become a billionaire from her music.
Other entertainment billionaires like Rihanna, Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Jay-Z, and Kanye West have joined the three-comma club thanks to ventures like clothing brands, beauty products, and other entrepreneurial pursuits. Rihanna has her FENTY Empire. Kim has her award-winning SKIMS. Ye had Yeezy. But Taylor has an unbeatable catalog of publishing.
But Taylor isn’t just different from other Billionaires because of how she earned her money. She’s the Taylor we know and love because of how she spends it. Her rollercoaster Eras Tour is how she’s made much of her fortune. And she’s using it to give back in monumental degrees. From individual donations to investing in local infrastructure, Taylor is literally changing lives on a macro and micro scale. And teaching us what to expect from all billionaires in the process.
The Era’s Tour Bonuses — Talk About Workplace Benefits
First to make headlines were the Eras Tour crew bonuses. While some of us get rewarded with a pizza party or a $10 gift card to Starbucks, Taylor casually dropped $55 million in bonuses for her tour crew. The massive sum was paid out to everyone who makes the Eras Tour go around, from truck drivers to dancers and sound technicians.
In fairness, these bonuses are definitely well-deserved. Taylor’s shows are over three hours long. Imagine dancing for that long — because Swift certainly isn’t the one with the impressive moves — for hundreds of tour dates. Or remembering countless combinations of light cues to go with a setlist that changes daily. Yeah, they’re clocking in. And if my boss had millions to blow, I’d be expecting a comfortable bonus too. But $55 Million? That’s a testament to Swift’s generosity. It's like she's Oprah, but instead of cars, she's giving out life-changing amounts of cash. "You get a bonus! You get a bonus! Everybody gets a bonus!"
It’s similar to how Zendaya gave film equity to every member of the crew that worked on her controversial black-and-white drama, Malcolm & Marie. Filmed in a few days with a bare-bones crew during the peak of the pandemic, the film was Zendaya’s passion project with Sam Levinson, in which she starred alongside John David Washington. Though the film got mixed reviews, it captured the audience’s attention all the same. After all, it was Zendaya — and we’ll watch her in anything. So since the film sold to Netflix for a hefty sum, all the crew members got payouts from the deal on top of their salaries to reward their hard work.
Bonuses and equity payouts are common in many industries, but not entertainment. Even though it’s one of the most lucrative and recognizable American industries, most entertainers don’t make enough to survive. The SAG and WGA strikes last year were proof that there needs to be systemic change in the industry. LA County has even identified show businesses as risk factors for being unhoused — after all, how many stories do we hear of actors who were living in their cars before their big break? And for many, their big break never comes. For even more, they get hired on amazing gigs with giant performers … then go right back to the grind afterward. While individual actions from our favorite stars won’t fix everything, Zendaya and Taylor are providing models for how Hollywood should treat the people who make this town go round.
And in this economy, even a little bit could go a long way. Inflation and the cost of living are not a joke. Especially when, like with many creative careers, you often have to invest in lessons or equipment for your craft. With all this considered, the impact of Swirt’s donations can’t be overstated. Imagine getting a lump sum of cash for dancing to your favorite Taylor Swift tracks? Talk about a dream job.
The Economic Impact of Swift - Swiftonomics, if you will
Like Barbie and Beyonce last year, Swift is still on a tear to boost the economy of the cities she’s in just by traveling there — ad inspiring others to make the trek, too.
The Barbie movie proved that by marketing to women (instead of just making Marvel flops like Madame Web that aren’t really targeted to women at all), the entertainment industry can make giant profits. Barbie fever went beyond the theater. Thanks to a plethora of product collabs, the phenomenon rippled through retail.
Similarly, Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour tour generated an estimated $4.5 billion for the American economy. According to NPR, that’s almost as much as the entire 2008 Olympics earned for Beijing. People were taking money out of their 401ks to pay for Beyonce tickets and the glittery, silver-hues outfits to rock at her shows. Cities even started calling her effect the “Beyonce Bump.”
Swift has the same effect. She’s not just proving her generosity on a micro-scale for the people close to her, she’s having actual, tangible effects on the economy. It's like she's leaving a trail of dollar bills in her wake, and cities are scrambling to catch them like it's a country-pop, capitalist version of musical chairs.
The US Travel Association called it the Taylor Swift Impact after she generated over $5 Billion in just the first 5 months of the Eras Tour. But how does this work? It’s not like Taylor is printing more money at those shows, but it almost is. Her tour dates are pretty much economic steroid shots for local businesses. Hotels are booked solid, restaurants are packed, and let's not even get started on the surge in friendship bracelet supplies.
“Swifties averaged $1,300 of spending in local economies on travel, hotel stays, food, as well as merchandise and costumes,” say the US Travel Association. “That amount of spending is on par with the Super Bowl, but this time it happened on 53 different nights in 20 different locations over the course of five months.” That’s not to say anothing of her effect on the actual Super Bowl and the entire NFL season thanks to her ball-throwing boyfriend.
It's like she's created her own micro-economy, and everyone's invited to the party. And unlike some economic theories that rely on wealth trickling down (spoiler alert: it doesn't), Taylor's wealth is more like a t-shirt cannon or the confetti at her shows — showering everyone around.
Donations that actually do good
Taylor isn’t just stepping into cities and calling it a night. She’s also not just throwing pennies at problems - she's making significant contributions that are changing lives. And more importantly, she's using her platform to encourage her fans to do the same.
She kicked off her tour with quiet donations to food banks in Glendale, Ariz., and Las Vegas ahead of the Eras Tour. Once the tour was in full swing, she continued this practice. In Seattle, she donated to Food Lifeline, a local hunger relief organization. In Santa Clara, she showed some love to Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. And let's not forget about her $100,000 donation to the Hawkins County School Nutrition Program in Tennessee.
She’s been making similar donations overseas. Taylor Swift donated enough money to cover the food bills for an entire year across 11 food banks and & community pantries in Liverpool. Swift also covered 10,800 meals for Cardiff Foodbank and many more banks across the UK and EU. Her impact is so profound that her numbers are doing more to combat issues like hunger than the government.
Can billionaires actually be good?
One thing about me, I’m always ready and willing — knife and fork in hand — to eat the rich. Because fundamentally, can any billionaire really be good? In our late-stage capitalist horror story, the answer is usually no. Look how many of them are supporting the Trump campaign just to get some tax breaks.
But here's the thing - Taylor Swift might just be the exception that proves the rule. She's not perfect, sure. She still flies private jets and probably has a carbon footprint bigger than Bigfoot. But unlike most of the others in her tax bracket, she's not flaunting her wealth like it's a personality trait.
Take a look around. We've got billionaires trying to colonize Mars instead of, I don't know, helping people on Earth. In this context, Taylor's approach is more like Mackenzie Scott’s — Bezos’s ex-wife. She's not trying to escape to another planet - she's trying to make this one better.
And look, I'm not saying we should stop critiquing billionaires or the system that creates them. But she's just setting the bar for what we should expect from all billionaires. She's showing us that our collective power as fans can translate into real-world change. That our love for catchy choruses and bridge drops can somehow, improbably, lead to food banks getting funded and crew members getting life-changing bonuses.
So sorry to my neighbors who hear me belting “Cruel Summer” and “right where you left me” at the top of my lungs (and range). Just know it’s for the greater good.
Is It Finally Time For The Kohinoor To Be Returned To India?
Queen Mother's Crown on top of the coffin/ Peter Macdiarmid/Shutterstock
Queen Elizabeth II’s death brought immense sadness to Britain. The United Kingdom has gone into mourning. Throngs of people are queueing outside Westminster Hall to bid farewell to the longest reigning Monarch in English history.
As the Queen's reign ends and her son King Charles III ascends the throne, countries within the commonwealth are left wondering what it will mean for them. Jamaica might become a republic, Australia seems to be mulling their options, and India has a Twitter riotous debate about getting the Kohinoor back.
For many, it’s merely a diamond that rests on top of the crown — the most expensive diamond in the world, at between $140 - $400 Million. But for Indians, it’s much-much more— history, tradition, and memories of pre-colonial India as well as the pain of colonial India.
Kohinoor or Kho-i-Noor — which means 'Mountain of Light' — is a 105.6-carat diamond that was found in southern India in the 14th century. This is where I’m from, so it hits close to home. This gem was claimed by the British during colonial times. Currently, there are 4 countries — India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran — trying to claim it back.
Historia/Shutterstock
The Crown Made For Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother On the Coronation of King George Vi/Historia/Shutterstock
Along with sapphires and other precious stones, the Kohinoor is only one of the 2,800 diamonds in the Monarch partner’s crown which was fashioned in 1937. This was while India was still under British rule. But since their freedom in 1947, there have been animated discussions about who the Kohinoor rightfully belongs to.
Many British museums are packed with artifacts looted from other cultures. In July 2010, then Prime Minister of the UK David Cameron said, “If you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty.”
So, here’s the question. Should the Kohinoor stay in with the crown or returned to India?
During the 14th century, it was uncovered in the Indian Golconda mines and passed through many hands. Sashi Tharoor mentioned in his book An Era of Darkness, “The diamond was formally handed over to Queen Victoria by the child Sikh heir Maharaja Duleep Singh, who simply had no choice in the matter. As I have pointed out in the Indian political debate on the issue, if you hold a gun to my head, I might ‘gift’ you my wallet. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it back when your gun has been put away.”
Does that make it rightfully India’s property?
Numerous Indians share this position, especially since Camilla, the Queen Consort will now wear this iconic diamond. So, of course, #Kohinoor went viral on Twitter with a flood of humor-driven memes. However, there’s a serious petition underway seeking a minimum of a million signatures. The petition’s aim is to spotlight the topic of restitution and where the diamond will rightfully sit.
Recently, the Horniman Museum in London announced that it would return 72 artifacts — including 12 brass plaques known as Benin Bronzes which were swiped in 1897 — to the Nigerian government.
Is this the first step?
The crown may look glittering and glorious to some. To many Indians the appropriation of the Kohinoor as part of the Crown Jewels connotes imperialism and the tragedies that occurred during 89 years of British oppression.
Danielle Kinsey — Assistant professor of history at Carleton University — said, “There are many, many other artifacts in Britain that continue to function as imperial trophies. And when people from around the world have to shell out the money and go through all of the visa and travel issues to go to Britain to engage with pieces of their own cultures and their own pasts, this continues the trauma of empire for them.”
Indians storming into the Buckingham trying to retrieving the #Kohinoor back pic.twitter.com/rgttCLSPbF
— kroo (@akehaiKr) September 8, 2022
The perspective of the colonized is only now coming to world view. Throughout history they were sidelined but now that society is more progressive, there’s an apprehension of the wrongs that have occurred. Surely, if a nation admits to a wrong, then steps ought to be taken to right it.
India before the British was one of the richest countries in the world — when they left it was one of the poorest. The Kohinoor is a symbolic reference to the deprivation caused by colonial rule. Its valuation wouldn’t even cover 1% of the trillions pilfered from India during the colonial period. But it would send a message to Indians of respect and an equal friendship.
"Flaunting the Kohinoor on the Queen Mother's crown in the Tower of London is a powerful reminder of the injustice perpetrated by the former imperial power. Until it is returned — at least as a symbolic gesture of expiation — it will remain evidence of the loot, plunder, and misappropriation that colonialism was really all about," added Sashi Tharoor.
Jokes and petitions are only the beginning. Isn’t it time for the British to stop amplifying their imperialism and return precious artifacts they’ve stolen from the world?
Personally, I’d love to see the Kohinoor return to India. It could be the start of Britain accepting their responsibility of past injustices and moving into a future of reconciliation.
The Climate Crisis Is About Social Oppression
Climate change activism has a whiteness problem and a class problem.
The movement's hypocrisy has grown harder to ignore as the climate crisis has intensified. Environmental racism has left poorer communities on the frontlines of unclean air and dangerous pipelines, while largely shutting their voices out of the decision and policy-making aspects of change.
The problem is rooted in the way environmental activism has traditionally been defined. Early environmental efforts (at least the ones that received the most funding) often focused on preservation and conservation of untouched land. These efforts existed in silos, painting the Earth as a childlike entity—as if the planet was separate and somehow lower than humans. This Earth was treated like an entity that required saving, and the saving was to be done by corporate firms and guilty consumers.
Even during these early times, many groups were actively fighting systemic oppression in conjunction with environmental activism, from Latino farmworkers protesting pesticides to Black students in Harlem fighting to oppose city garbage dumps in their communities. Still, over the next several decades, the mainstream environmental movement failed to realize that the climate crisis was not merely a matter of spoiled rivers and suffering polar bears. The climate crisis was seen as something separate from human life and separate from other social issues. Large "big green" corporations focused on promoting small changes that people could make on individual scales, as if "going green" could save us. We could all take shorter showers, take the bus instead of driving, purchase expensive organic products, and shut up—nevermind that the super wealthy have always used up far more resources and energy than their fair share.
A Crisis of Understanding
"Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war," writes Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate. "Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature."
The climate movement will absolutely fail if it does not recognize the importance of its relationships with other social movements. The climate movement must stand in solidarity with organizations fighting for racial and class equity, for an end to the prison industrial complex and for reparations. It must stand in solidarity with people of color and particularly with Indigenous people, who have always been leading in the fight, and all climate movements must defer to leaders who are living on the front lines of the crisis.
If the climate movement continues to prioritize "an end to the climate crisis" over an end to capitalism, if the movement continues to languish in apocalyptic fears rather than paying attention to how climate actually affects people's lives, if the movement remains disconnected from actual life and the way that the climate crisis is already here for so many people around the globe, it will fail.
socialism.ca
Just as we humans cannot survive if we view ourselves as separate from the earth, we can't view the climate crisis as unrelated to other issues of inequality and systemic violence. We need to understand that, just as everything in nature relies on everything else—rivers flow into oceans, tree roots create an underlying network of communication that stretches through an entire forest—the movement to stop climate change is the movement to end relentless capitalism, which is also the movement to address the monetary inequalities that still exist because of America's legacy of colonization, slavery, and other violences.
The Future of Environmental Justice
Activist groups are waking up to this, at least theoretically. Groups like the youth organization Sunrise Movement have rallied around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal, a movement that aims to combine a massive reduction in carbon emissions with reforms that will make safe housing, affordable food, and health care available to everyone.
thenation
In some ways, Sunrise still suffers from the problems that have always plagued environmental groups: a pervasive level of whiteness and classism. But the movement has been discussing how to change this, initiating a hub restructure program and encouraging the development of smaller, more local groups that will facilitate local outreach. The next step is to put the voices of people who are already fighting for justice into power, people like the Indigenous climate activists who have been protecting the earth for centuries, often at great personal risk.
These are complex tasks that require deep thought and challenging conversations, but they are of the utmost importance. The environmental movement will fail unless it embraces its interconnectedness with all things–Embracing interconnectedness will only ever make us all stronger.
Climate change will inevitably result in tremendous change. If we somehow succeed in pulling the world back from the brink of climate disaster but fail to address other systems of oppression—if we merely keep the world as it is, favoring only the super-rich, allowing suffering on a massive scale despite the fact that we have the resources to address it—would the movement be a victory for anyone except those who were already winning?
Global Warming? It’s the End of the World as We Know it, and the Rich Don’t Mind – Here’s Why
The super-rich are hoping inequality is here to stay, even after the apocalypse.
These people are not members of a doomsday cult, climate change 'skeptic' Super-PAC, or owners of exceptionally-developed spleens. They are part of a far more elite class of mammals –– the super-rich –– and, as the storms rage ever harder on the rest of us, they've prepared emergency kits that have far more than a flashlight and a radio in them.
In 1888, the British industrialist and fervent imperialist Cecil Rhodes gained a charter for exclusive mineral rights in lands that are now part of the nation of Zimbabwe. What set this particular acquisition apart from the earlier expansions of British control, however, was the fact that Southern Rhodesia (named, in customarily humble fashion, after its 'founder') was not a colony founded under the usual auspices of the desire of British expansionism, but as a result of the singular desire of a wealthy man to exert his control over territories that he believed were his to rule. The explicitly apartheid state of Rhodesia –– which would rule the nation from 1965 to 1979 without international recognition –– was the symbolic successor to this ideology, and its legacy of colonial plunder haunts Zimbabwe (once the great breadbasket of Africa) to this day. Eccentric Victorian industrialists' dreams of vainglorious expansion may seem like a far-flung relic; something to be exiled to a colonial past, rather than alive in our interconnected present.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Yet, a world where sea levels are rising and storms are strengthening has given impetus to a new generation of businessmen dedicated to the prospect of forging a different future for their own ends. Unlike Rhodes, the unimaginably wealthy of our time are not motivated by the pride and riches of a national empire, but by the base desire to survive in an apocalyptic future where others of lesser means cannot.
The Seasteading Institute, established in 2008 by prominent techno-libertarians such as venture capitalist and Facebook investor Peter Thiel, seeks to develop:
"...a model wherein a single company comprising several stakeholders will oversee construction and management of a highly autonomous floating city, leaving residents and entrepreneurs free to operate their own lives and businesses."
While this may sound like the vanity project of a few multi-millionaires, the institute is far from a folly. In 2017 they gained the rights to develop their first 'autonomous community' off the coast of French Polynesia –– a settlement that is explicitly designed to be immune to the rising sea-levels that are an existential threat to the Pacific island nation; which is also, in a sort of tragic irony, a relic of French imperial power. That the endeavor seems to be simply interested in offering a tax-free refuge for the rich rather than mitigating the threat of global climate change to its prospective hosts is indicative of a world where the future of a tiny percentage of the population possesses the means to forge a future for themselves that is widely divergent from that of the rest of the planet –– a sort of survivalist colonialism that derives its power from capital, rather than nation states.
Concept design for the 'Floating Island Project'Photo: The Seasteading Institute
The sea-steader mindset is not, like their imperialist forebearers, constricted by the bonds of the globe, or confined to the lands of the so called 'Global South' –– its ambitions stretch as far as outer space, while also touching the homey plains of Kansas. Inspired by writers like Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard (who famously rejected the women's rights and civil rights movements as "contemptuous and hostile"), these new self-styled 'anarcho-capitalists' seem willing to forge a future which protects their property and status at any cost, including the lives of their fellow human beings. Elon Musk, Twitter's favorite tech-billionaire, appears dedicated to using his fortune (which currently stands at 20 billion dollars) on a Martian colonization project which is unlikely to be in the price range of most regular apocalypse-fleeing humans. While Musk's space-faring future continues to be the preserve of engineering-defying ambition, his reaction to real-world climate catastrophes has been ambivalent at best. When Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico's power grid, Musk's press-friendly offer to rebuild with Tesla technology turned out to be a veiled attempt at privatization –– a brazen con by a man bound for life on Mars, seeking to profit off of those left drowning behind. On a smaller scale, the increasing number of tech entrepreneurs hoarding ammunition and building shelters in disused Kansas missile silos represents a similar desire for the wealthy to ensure that the vast wealth inequality already present in America continues after the end of days.
That is not to say that the rest of us in the 'developed' world are immune from blame. While the extravagant fantasies of a few individuals make for intriguing (and often darkly hilarious) copy, the nature of global wealth disparity has led to a reality in which the measures taken by even the most middle-class citizens to survive in a warming world are actively contributing to its demise. Experts warn that, as temperatures rise, the increasing use of air conditioning by Americans seeking shelter from record-setting heat waves could contribute to a surge in air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions. It is becoming increasingly clear that the threat posed to communities by climate change, from Floridian retirees to Mongolian subsistence farmers, is the result of an unsustainable and unequal distribution of resource-use that implicates all of us. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that, just as Cecil Rhodes once lashed out on his own at the limits of a waning colonial power, the elite of our time are now blazing a destructive trail of survival in the wake of a system on the verge of collapse.